


A Queen for the Jester

by CarnivalofBrokenDolls (yourrhinestoneeyes)



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Ed feeling guilt, F/M, Gen, Going with the theory that Isabella is Harley Quinn, Jerome Being Jerome, M/M, Violence, some bride of frankenstein vibes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-22 16:57:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9616886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourrhinestoneeyes/pseuds/CarnivalofBrokenDolls
Summary: Jerome needs a new friend and he knows the perfect place to find himself one. On the other side of Gotham Ed is feeling guilty and some second thoughts on killing his one and only friend.





	1. An Easy Asylum Break

**Author's Note:**

> So originally this was going to be just one or two chapters, but now I'm thinking about adding more things to it and I'll be updating the characters included and the relationships. This might get long and strange, but like the typical type of strange one can expect from the Batman verse.

Jerome found himself needing a right-hand man or preferably, a right-hand woman. During his time in Arkham it had taken him little time to form an army, forming an army out of monsters and deranged lunatics was almost easier than turning the normal citizens of Gotham into raging fiends. He had quickly grown a shallow attachment to Jervis Tetch who had a great knack for hypnosis and hypnotic suggestion, Nathaniel Barnes wasn’t exactly the fun type, but his strength made barreling through guards and doctors an easy task. Jerome knew in a way they were his temporary right-hand men, but there was something lackluster there. Jervis had a nagging obsession with his dead sister, Barnes spewed constant threats that bored Jerome to yawns and tears within minutes. 

Once outside the horrid walls of Arkham asylum Jerome watched as both men scurried away in their own direction. He knew that Jervis found Barnes constant screams of ‘guilty’ to be an annoyance, but the Hatter still seemed to harbor a close bond to the bald middle aged man. It had been explained to Jerome five or six times in the past month, but he didn’t care enough to really retain the reasoning behind their closeness. 

Jerome took a small army of stripe clad lunatics with him on his own route to a place where he knew he could find himself the perfect experiment of sorts.

Knowing the GCPD, Dr. Strange, and the efficiency of Gotham it was an easy assumption that there would still be a good shop collection of corpses in the not so secret lab. With his army in tow he paced the aisles of the mostly darkened building, the glow of the containers being one of the main sources of light.

He casually glanced over each one looking at the frozen faces of the deceased and the ones who were simply comatose until somebody came knock knocking at their metal coffins. Most were old, most were male, and some he wasn’t too sure were even humans at all. 

It wasn’t until he reached the very last row that he found one that was just perfect. A metal coffin in the back of the building, the lack of dust on its surface let him know this one was a recent arrival. Through the small glass window, he could see the face of a woman, a woman who had to be in her early to mid-20s. Her curled red hair reached down to her shoulders, half of her face appeared to be charred from whatever had been her cause of death, but even through that Jerome found her quite appealing.

“Well hello gorgeous.” He greeted giving a small bow to the corpse who as he expected gave no reaction.


	2. Let Me In

Edward should have known beforehand that returning to Oswald’s mansion was a bad idea. 

In his mind, he coached himself that none of this mattered, that it was what must be done. Oswald had hurt him, he had lied to him, and stolen away Ed’s one chance to be a normal human being. How dare he tell Ed that he would have killed Isabella, neither of them knew that, and they never would. Their last moments, Oswald’s last words to him on the docks replayed in his mind like a record. Secretly he found he never wanted to forget the sound of the older man’s worn scratchy voice, the exhaustion and the pain there. It wasn’t that enjoyed that sound, but it was that he knew he’d never hear his voice again. He couldn’t shake the glazed blue eyes that stared up at him through the water, bound hands reaching up towards him as all the light left eyes that used to be so full of life.

Returning to the mansion had been a bad idea.

Ed felt the burn of tears in his eyes, tears he blinked away, and pretended weren’t caused by memories of his girlfriend’s killer.

No, he wasn’t crying for him, he couldn’t grieve him. Oswald deserved to die, he had had no excuse for what he had done. It crossed a line, he had lied.

The mansion was silent as a grave, it felt like walking through a cemetery if he were perfectly honest with himself. He even had the paranoia that there were eyes upon him as he walked through the now abandoned home. A place that used to be warm and full of sound, the sound of scurrying servants, and the sound of Oswald yelling demands at under paid workers. 

Ed looked at the dining table where the two of them spent so many mornings and evenings together. They would eat their meals, talk about their days, and fantasize openly about the future they planned together. 

He stopped walking and stared at the table, he could almost hear the ghost of Oswald’s laughter. He was the only person Ed could ever get to laugh at his jokes and snarky remarks, that was until Isabella. She found Ed’s jokes funny, she found him witty, handsome, and to be quite the genius.

Oswald had to die.

Isabella deserved to be alive, they could have built a good life together. Ed could have proved he wasn’t a monster like his father referred to him all those years ago. So many people in his life called him a freak and a monster, a loser….

He could still feel the sting of it from when Oswald called him that, he couldn’t recall ever before hearing insults like that from his friend. It hurt more than it should have, it almost hurt more than learning Oswald was Isabella’s killer.

Ed could feel the weight of his other self, feel his presence. He had to admit he himself felt rather exhausted.

“Come on dude just let me in, I promise things will get way more fun with me in control.” 

Ed turned around to see his other self in all his glory. He stood there in his black suit, no glasses, a shit eating grin on his face as he looked at Ed.

“What should we do?”

His darker self walked towards him, hands stuffed in the pockets of his dress pants.

“We are going to do what we should have done ages ago. Christ dude the only smart thing that little bird said to us before we put a hole in him was point out what a loser you were before. He was wrong about making you though, I think I should be getting credit for that one.”

Ed breathed in deeply through his nose, he held his breath for severely seconds before exhaling through his mouth. He admitted to himself he was scared, scared of Oswald’s love, scared of the lethal trust that Isabella had placed in him, and he was above all scared of himself.

“Look I know you loved the guy and that’s touching and all, but I was fucking right. He got into your head, you’ve been putting me on mute for close to a year now. It’s time to show this city that you aren’t some jittery loser who runs to the Penguin every time you get your ass in trouble.”

His other self came closer until he was mere inches from him.

“Let me in Eddie.” He whispered to him.

Another deep breath as Ed closed his eyes, he felt himself fading into a darkness that was familiar. He felt the nagging fear that this time he might never wake from the darkness, Ed was too tired to fight it. Maybe he was right and it was time to give up control to a version of himself that was strong, show the city who it was they were really fucking with.

A cruel smile curved Ed’s lips as he opened his eyes again. Finally, it was time to play.


	3. At Your Service

Jerome felt absolutely giddy as he ordered his crew to set everything up. It was a lot like those old Frankenstein movies, wires and tubes hooked up to the dead beauty lying on the metal slab. As the electricity coursed through her body he noticed ever twitch and spasm. He watched carefully for any sign that truly meant this girl was going to come back from the dead. 

In just a few minutes he noticed her fingers twitch and curl inwards towards her palm, lips parting slightly.

“Come on baby, come on” he whispered repeatedly as he watched her.

One more jolt and he yelled for his goon to shut the surge down, he knew it worked. He remembered waking from his own death, he remembered the momentary confusion and not even knowing he’d been dead. He remembered mostly wondering where the hell his face had gone. 

The woman on the table moved her legs, her hands, she moved like somebody who was coming out of a drunken slumber. Jerome approached her, he stood at the end of the table placing his hands upon the warmed metal surface. He titled his head slightly to the side watching her with an enraptured curiosity.

Her now bright green eyes locked on him, studied him, and a second later she screamed.

Not that he could blame her. Half her face was mangled and she did just return to life to look upon the sewn-on face of a red-haired murderer.

“There’s my girl, welcome back darlin’.” He greeted her as if this were normal.

To him it felt normal, the more he thought about it he realized he could grow a decent army of the dead if he could get more people from Indian Hill. He still had goons lurking in the morgue in Gotham, they would be more than happy to bring him fresh corpses.

The woman looked around the room at the faces of the dirtied and quite mental men who stood around watching this even take place. The look on her face screamed pure fear and confusion, her chest heaving with heavy breaths. He wondered if she realized she had been dead, perhaps she mistook this for a horrible nightmare.

“What’s happening?”

Finally, real words, it was good to know she could speak. He wasn’t sure how fun it would be to have a right-hand girl who couldn’t speak.

“You my dear just woke up from a very dull dream.” 

Again, she looked at him, her look of terror at seeing his face from before had faded into a look of curiosity. 

“A dream?”

“That’s right, whatever you thought was real before is just a dream. Welcome to your new reality, got a name?”

The woman on the table slowly pulled herself into a sitting position, she placed a hand against her forehead.

“Kristen…..No it’s Isabella…..No that isn’t, I-I can’t remember.” She confessed laughing softly to herself.

“Well that’s weird, but names aren’t important. I’ll give ya a new one.”

She looked back to the red headed man with the stitches lining the whole of his face, she really did feel he was somehow familiar. She felt a dull pain in her head and chest, there were figments of memories and if this stranger was correct then they were all just sweet dreams and bad nightmares. She reached a hand out to the stranger who wore black and white striped clothes that she was sure meant he was from Arkham asylum. She felt herself smiling when he took hold of her hand holding it and kissing her knuckles.

“Oh! I know what to call you, I’ll call you Harley. My Harley girl, how do you like the sound of that?”

Harley. She liked the sound of that name.

“Harley, yes I think I quite like that name, and who might you be?”

Jerome took a step back away from her, “I’m Jerome, at your service darlin’.” He stated with a bow.

She giggled, he grinned up at her liking the sound of her laughter.

A new outfit, anything of her liking, and maybe a bit of a touch up to the mauled part of her face and she would be his dream girl.


	4. Perfect Murder

Letting his dark side take control was possibly the greatest decision Ed had made in his life. He just felt much lighter, he didn’t feel the pull and tug of guilt or regret. When he allowed his other personality complete control there were no worries, he felt like he could never be caught or caged or tried.

That was why he found himself leaving clues, puzzles, a signature tag of a green question mark on a painting. He would leave a trail for the GCPD and being the idiots that they were, they would not be able to trace it all back to him.

Ed put plenty of thought into everything that he did. He knew he wanted to bring Gotham city to its knees. He had worked effortlessly in making Oswald look like a crook and a villain, it wasn’t hard taking into consideration that only the idiots of the city thought the man could possibly be good. It was Gotham, nobody was good, especially a man who ran the underworld of the city. Now that Penguin was out of the picture as well as the other major crime families the slate was completely clean. The only real obstacle that was planted in his path seemed to be Barbara Kean and her goons.

Last that he checked they undermined him. He knew their plan, the secret plan that they didn’t think he knew about. They would pretend that they were going to kill him to get Oswald to admit he was willing to give Ed up to save his own neck, but then once Edward killed off Penguin they would kill off Ed. For whatever reason, they took him for a fool and he was well past tired of people thinking they could take advantage of him.

The plan included Ed going back to the bar that they would be waiting at. They wanted him to return to tell them that Penguin was dead, they assumed he would run back to them like a loyal dog. He knew that with each passing hour that they didn’t see him or hear from him that it was driving them up the wall. They probably thought he couldn’t go through with it, that both him and Oswald were on the run off to hide and come up with a plan to take the three of them out. Perhaps they thought Oswald killed Ed.

By the time that evening came his phone rang, Barbara’s name appeared on the screen, and Ed smiled to himself.

Perfect.

“Yes?”

“Nygma where the Hell are you?”

“Taking care of things.”

“Did you do it or did he bat those lashes of his and get you to change your mind?”

Ed let out a short-clipped laugh at the ridiculous notion.

“He’s dead. I took him to the docks, I shot him, and threw his body into the water.”

He could sense her doubt, he felt himself tense that she thought he was lying. Ed did his best to not lie and when he did he always gave himself away, too bad he had no real proof that Penguin was dead.

“Well that isn’t what I was hoping for. I was hoping for you to come here with his head as proof, which brings me back to my original question; where are you?”

“Where I currently am is none of your concern. I know about the plan.”

Ed glanced around the office he currently resided in. It was small, but nothing too cramped, and he’d already had it designed to his specific wants and needs. He took a seat on the large leather chair behind the ridiculously big oak desk, he kicked his feet up on the surface and looked out the window to watch the chaos of the city outside his window.

“Yeah, the plan where we pretend we are going to kill you and you kill Penguin, what the hell is up with you?”

“Let’s just say I reached a point of clarity and that this game that you think you’re playing has changed. I know Tabitha is just itching to put a bullet between my eyes at any second, Butch would just love to snap my neck with his gross fake hand, and well you just want the illusion of power. If you three truly wish to take me out then you’ll have to come and find me, but I should warn you there are some things that might make this tricky.”

There was a long silence on the other end, he could almost hear her rage boiling over. He could picture the three of them gathered at the bar wanting his head on a plate.

“Listen here you sniveling little freak. We know you didn’t kill Penguin, I bet he’s sitting on your lap like a prized dog right now.”

Ed let out a heavy sigh, he felt a slight ache in his chest at what she said.

“If you really don’t believe me then go to the docks, have Butch or one of your other pet goons go into the water and find his body. I promise you Ms. Kean it is in there.”

With that he ended the call, he tossed his phone onto the desk and lounged back feeling utterly satisfied.

They would go to the docks, they would see the puddle of blood soaked into the wood, they would go into the water and find Oswald’s body, and then at the perfect moment they would be caught by the GCPD due to an anonymous tip about screams and a gun shot heard in the early morning hours. A group of sketchy looking individuals hanging around the area, the cops would find them holding the very dead corpse of one Oswald Cobblepot.

Ed liked his plan and he liked knowing it would work out just as he planned in his head.


End file.
